Adam Nagourney

Pete Buttigieg has been the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, since 2012. He went to Harvard, spent two years as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, where he studied Immanuel Kant and John Rawls, and served as a Navy lieutenant in Afghanistan. He speaks Arabic. He plays concert piano. He is gay. And now, at the age of 37, he has written a memoir, “Shortest Way Home.”

On the face of it, this does seem a little early. Yes, Barack Obama wrote one in 1995, nine years before he made a name for himself with a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. But Obama was an unusual figure, a graceful writer with an arresting story of being an African-American with national political ambitions growing up in the turbulence of a race-torn nation.

The emergence of this memoir at this moment — Buttigieg (pronounced BOOT-edge-edge) has been elected to precisely one job so far — reflects the ambition and impatience of the man we get to know in these pages. He ran for Indiana state treasurer when he was 28, and was trounced. He withdrew after a heading-for-defeat bid to become the Democratic National Committee chairman in 2017. But more than that, Buttigieg’s accelerated career arc is testimony to our times, to how the pay-your-dues traditions that once governed politics have been tossed aside with the election of Donald Trump. It seems no longer surprising that someone most people have never heard of has delivered a memoir: It has become the modern equivalent of an early outing to New Hampshire.

With his rich résumé and his data-driven approach to running South Bend, Buttigieg has drawn attention from national Democrats and been suggested as potential presidential material by, among others, Frank Bruni in The New York Times. Just in case there was any doubt, Buttigieg announced this week that he was forming an exploratory committee, the first step toward a run for the White House. And no wonder: His hometown, once devastated by the shuttering of a Studebaker plant — he writes of passing “the acres of collapsing Studebaker factories” on his way to school — is now thriving. If the underlying point of this book is to draw attention to himself as a future Democratic leader for a party aching for one, then his thumping re-election as mayor in a state Trump captured with 56 percent is quite a selling card.

No small part of the fascination is that he is openly gay, twice elected in what he has sardonically described as “flyover country.” Yet until the final chapters — personal, beguiling and quite moving as he talks about coming out and getting married — it is a subject he largely glosses over. It takes more than 40 pages until he clearly alludes to being gay, in a quick detour as he describes witnessing the rise of the infant Facebook at Harvard.

Buttigieg takes us through growing up in South Bend, attending an Ivy League school, becoming a management consultant, joining the Navy Reserve. Much of his attention is on City Hall, with a green-eyeshade description of his methodical approach to dealing with 1,000 shuttered homes or increasing the efficiency of picking up the trash. There really is a chapter titled “Talent, Purpose and the Smartest Sewers in the World.” But this is what mayors do.

Until he recounts writing his coming-out essay for The South Bend Tribune, I had begun to wonder if Buttigieg had decided to airbrush his life story, with an eye to some future opposition researcher combing through these pages. This lends a cautious, sanitized feeling to some episodes. When he writes about dealing with Mike Pence (who was then the governor) as Pence championed a “religious freedom” bill that critics argued would let organizations discriminate against gays and lesbians, Buttigieg comes across as just another player at the table. I would have liked to learn, for example, if he ever wondered whether Pence was aware that this unmarried eligible bachelor was actually gay.

But the book lifts off as he returns from Afghanistan and decides it was “time to get serious about sorting out my personal life.” He recounts in satisfying detail the complexities of coming out when you are the mayor of South Bend. “The scenario of a 30-something mayor, single, gay, interested in a long-term relationship and looking for a date in Indiana must have been a first,” he writes. The story of his meeting a man (you guessed it: online) is all the more moving for its understatement and delayed delivery. Buttigieg represents a new generation of gay Americans, one whose sexuality is not intrinsic to their identity.

No one would ever accuse Buttigieg of being an evocative writer, but the story is told with brisk engagement — it is difficult not to like him — without sinking into the kind of prose one might fear from someone trained in writing reports for McKinsey. He writes with particular clarity when it comes to the subject of romance:

“I was in my 30s, but my training age, so to speak, was practically 0. On my 33rd birthday, I was starting my fourth year as the mayor of a sizable city. I had served in a foreign war and dined with senators and governors. I had seen the Red Square and the Great Pyramids of Giza, knew how to order a sandwich in seven languages, and was the owner of a large historic home on the St. Joseph River. But I had absolutely no idea what it was like to be in love.”

When Obama wrote his memoir, the idea that the nation would soon put an African-American in the White House seemed beyond the realm of the possible. After reading this memoir written 25 years later, the notion that Buttigieg might be the nation’s first openly gay president doesn’t feel quite as far-fetched.

—

“Shortest Way Home: One Mayor’s Challenge and a Model for America’s Future,” By Pete Buttigieg, 352 pages. Liveright Publishing. $27.95.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/24/books/review/pete-buttigieg-shortest-way-home.html" id="f9e70d2a-27c7-3773-a8e3-75a5ae392866">The New York Times</a>.

A Memoir From the Young, Gay Mayor of South Bend Running for President

(Nonfiction)

There was the invitation-only reception for 2,000 guests at a Sacramento basketball arena; the appearance on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday to talk about President Donald Trump and offer dark warnings about global warming; and the interviews with The Los Angeles Times, The Sacramento Bee and many others. On a recent Saturday alone, as Brown and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, shivered in front of a fire in their new home at the family ranch here in Williams, there were five separate interview and photography sessions.

Not that anyone should consider this any kind of long goodbye for Brown, whose successor will be sworn in Monday.

“No, we’ve got a lot to do,” Brown said. “I’ve been doing pardons. We have regulations we have been putting out. Appointments. So there’s a lot — the activity has continued apace.”

Brown, who served as California’s 34th governor and its 39th, has long counseled against overexposure. But he is someone who enjoys the limelight as much as the next politician — and understands as well as anyone that his window is closing. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic lieutenant governor, is moving into the governor’s office in the Capitol next week, and Brown is riding a wave of attention that will disappear as surely as his state trooper escort.

Brown is making the most of it. He is using his remaining days to offer warnings about the future of California and the planet and lessons learned from a half-century in public life, and to talk about a legacy of fiscal restraint — he arrived eight years ago to a $26 billion deficit, and is leaving a $14 billion surplus — and opposition to Trump. He also delivered some not-so-veiled admonitions for his successor about a recession that he suggested had already started and a looming assertion of power by interest groups and newly liberated Democratic lawmakers enjoying near historic margins in the Legislature.

“The Democratic constituencies want more money and more laws,” Brown said. “I take a different view. We have too many damn laws. The coercive power of the state should be invoked sparingly. They tell me almost all of the bills that I have vetoed have been reintroduced.”

Does he expect Newsom to approach the job in a similarly prescriptive way? “You know what a governor is on an engine?” Brown said. “The governor prevents the engine from getting out of control. Well, that is what the governor has to do in state government.”

Newsom, in interviews, has pledged to increase spending on early childhood education and a few other programs, but nonetheless said he would continue the fiscal practices followed by the departing governor.

This is not a moment of transition only for Brown; it is one for California, as well. The Brown family has been an integral part of political life here since Pat Brown, Jerry Brown’s father, was elected governor in 1958. Jerry Brown has served as governor twice, as mayor of Oakland, as state Democratic Party chairman and as attorney general. His sister Kathleen served as state treasurer.

But Brown, 80, who married for the first time in 2005, never had children. There is no one left to carry the family legacy. He is stepping down because of term limits; he said in an interview he probably would not have run again even if there were no term limit statute, if only because history has not looked kindly on governors of big states who seek third terms.

“What will I not miss?” Brown said, parrying a question with a question as he spoke at a luncheon. “I like it all. I like fundraising. I like sparring with the press. I like attacking my opponents. I like being attacked. I like the whole thing. People in this business like attention, and you get a lot of attention as governor.”

A few days later at the ranch, Brown said he did not know whether he would attend Newsom’s inauguration. “These are vulgar details,” he said. “I have a whole staff in charge of details. I’m more about the large, larger questions that are affecting our times.” (Short answer from one of those staff members: Of course he is).

Brown declined in an interview to offer Newsom advice — that, he said, would be unseemly — though he arched his eyebrows when asked if Newsom had sought his counsel during this two-month transition.

“No one has ever asked me for advice,” he said. “No one. Ever. I am one of the most knowledgeable people in American politics, and no one has ever asked. Not even local candidates. They don’t do that. Politicians are surrounded by consultants and staff.”

Brown suggested that Newsom and lawmakers should be cautious about spending, noting a history of governors opening up the state checkbook in what had appeared to be flush times but in fact were the early days of an economic downturn.

“Because the more money you have, the better you feel,” Brown said. “The better you feel, the more you spend. But at that very moment, you should have stopped.

“I’m just sorry I wasn’t married for the first time, that we didn’t move into the governor’s mansion, that I didn’t wait to run for president until the appropriate time,” Brown said, referring to the first time he ran for governor. “But things worked out perfectly.”

But he bristled at the idea that he had failed to use his political power to deal with this state’s notoriously volatile tax system. Its reliance on upper-income taxpayers means the state endures churning drops in revenues whenever there is a stock market crash.

“I love tax reform,” Brown said, with a note of sarcasm. “I’m waiting for Newsom to propose taxing the poor and the middle class and reducing the taxes on the rich. I’m waiting for that day. The damn rich have been taxed too much and now have to hit the middle class! That’s what tax reform is. Did you know that?”

It’s difficult to imagine this go-go-go governor — who flits from meeting to telephone call to interview to some book that has caught his interest — slowing down and actually retiring in his ranch about 100 miles north of San Francisco, where there is barely another house in sight.

Standing on top of a hill on his 2,514-acre property, after a bone-jarring, nerve-rattling drive in an off-road vehicle up a steep dirt road (“Noooo!” Gust Brown yelled as her husband turned the vehicle toward the hill), the governor rejected the notion he would have nothing to fill his time in the years ahead.

“What are you talking about?” he said. “There is going to be a stream of visitors. Presidential candidates. Legislators. Executives. Artists. Theologians.”

Brown was joking, but he does have $16 million in a personal political action committee that he is taking with him as he leaves office. “And I can support or oppose candidates with unlimited expenditures,” the governor said at his farewell bash at the Golden 1 Center, to an audience that included many elected officials. “Please be nice to me. Take my calls. Show me some respect.”

He is planning to turn his attention to working on global warming and nuclear disarmament. “I’ve got a few acts left,” he said, scoffing at the idea that he is “walking into the sunset, just disappearing over the horizon.”

Brown and Gust Brown have built a 2,700-square-foot home on the family ranch. They have bought a hybrid car — “It’s complicated now,” he said, referring to the intricacies of choosing a vehicle — and installed solar panels. After many years in state government, a more domestic life awaits.

“Who started the fire?” Gust Brown asked as she walked into the living room.

“I did — with a little help from the CHP,” Brown responded, referring to the California Highway Patrol.

“You don’t have the heat on?” Gust Brown asked with a shiver. “Why don’t you have the heat on?”

“We don’t need heat,” the soon-to-be ex-governor responded. Brown offered that he had built an impressive fire.

“Good job, honey,” Gust Brown said. “You are becoming a farmer.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/us/california-governor-jerry-brown-farewell-tour.html" id="2e12bcc3-c206-38af-a457-694a68d8a01c">The New York Times</a>.

WILLIAMS, Calif. — It’s time to add another name to the farewell tour circuit in this year of Elton John, Joan Baez, Paul Simon and Ozzy Osbourne: Jerry Brown, the governor of California.

'What Will I Not Miss?' In California, a Long Farewell From Jerry Brown

There was the invitation-only reception for 2,000 guests at a Sacramento basketball arena; the appearance on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday to talk about President Donald Trump and offer dark warnings about global warming; the sold-out Sacramento Press Club forum and the interviews with The Los Angeles Times, The Sacramento Bee and many others. On a recent Saturday alone, as Brown and his wife, Anne Gust Brown, shivered in front of a fire in their new home at the family ranch here in Williams, there were five separate interview and photography sessions.

<h1>SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed a blizzard of new spending in his first budget, calling for increased expenditures on education, homelessness and poverty, as well as programs to bolster California’s long-term fiscal health.</h1>

His $209 billion proposal, which now goes to the Legislature, left little doubt that California, already one of the more liberal states, was taking a turn to the left and moving beyond the fiscal restraint of his predecessor, Jerry Brown. Newsom’s new spending plans take advantage of a growing surplus he projects for the state.

The governor laid out his plans Thursday, his fourth day on the job, in a two-hour presentation, reading from notes scribbled on a legal pad and fielding often detailed questions.

At one point, apparently speaking extemporaneously as he walked across a stage, Newsom offered state financial assistance for workers furloughed in the partial shutdown of the federal government — a huge community of workers in this state. “Any of those federal employees who are furloughed, come in and we’ll get you unemployment insurance,” he said.

In response to a question, Newsom said he did not have a figure for what that assistance might cost the state.

He also said that his budget called for spending $305 million to clear dry brush in heavily wooded areas, as part of an accelerated effort to deal with the state’s scourge of wildfire. Newsom first announced that plan Monday. The following day, President Donald Trump sharply criticized California’s fire prevention efforts in a Twitter message, saying he would order federal officials to cut off emergency aid to the state.

The stylistic and policy contrasts with Brown were notable, and at times Newsom seemed to encourage comparisons. For example, he suggested that he had been much more open to negotiating with the Legislature during the budget preparation process than Brown had been — an assertion that was not disputed by lawmakers.

At another point, Newsom said that unlike his predecessor, he would move at some point to try to rewrite the state’s notoriously volatile tax system.

“I am not naive,” he said. “Gov. Brown had no interest in this, even at the peak of his power.”

Democrats and advocacy groups that had been frustrated under Brown, despite the party’s total dominance of state politics, expressed enthusiasm for Newsom’s budget.

“Senate Democrats are encouraged to see thoughtful, progressive initiatives in Governor Newsom’s proposed budget that can make a difference in the lives of Californians,” said Toni Atkins, a Democrat and the leader of the state Senate.

Republicans expressed concern at the pace of Newsom’s proposed spending but praised him for looking to pay down the state’s debt.

“While California’s fiscal picture this year is strong, the longer-term economic outlook is less certain,” said Marie Waldron, the Republican leader in the Assembly. “Our state liabilities are substantial, so we must avoid overcommitting the state with programs that will be threatened when our economy slows.”

Newsom said the state anticipated a $21.5 billion surplus, or about $6 billion more than legislative analysts had projected in November. He said that was largely because of a drop in claims from Medi-Cal, the state’s health care program for the poor.

The governor appeared to be walking a line between aggressively advocating new spending and showing sensitivity to California’s history of financial gyrations. He emphasized that he would use $13.5 billion of the surplus to retire debt and increase the state’s reserve fund. And he said that the vast majority of his new spending would be for one-time costs like building classrooms, rather than for new recurring expenses, like hiring additional day care workers.

“We are preparing for uncertain times,” Newsom said. “And we are paying down the debt in historic ways, and we are paying down unfunded liabilities in a way we never have.”

Still, the new governor clearly did not share the deep economic worries expressed by Brown and others, who have argued that the state is overdue for a recession.

“We are assuming that we are going to continue economic expansion,” Newsom said. “I know that sends shivers up some people’s spines, because I know we are 10 years into the recovery. Let me get this out of the way: None of us are naive. The governor said the next governor is going to be standing on a cliff. That may be true.”

From the day he took office, Newsom’s aides have made clear that he was intent on spending money to address the deep problems of income inequality in California. By any measure, his budget seemed intended to take Brown’s foot off the brake, in ways big and small.

It calls for increased spending on early child education, paid parental leave, college scholarships, workforce training and housing. It would expand Medi-Cal to cover more people in the country without authorization.

Newsom wants $3 million a year for research into Alzheimer’s disease, and $576 million to expand special education offerings in public schools. He would double a tax credit for working families and pay for literacy training for 26,000 inmates in state prisons.

Noting that 5 percent of the state’s children live in deep poverty, Newsom called for more money for CalWORKs, a public assistance program for families that has drawn criticism.

“At a time when people seem to be backing away, we are going to lean in,” he said. “I’m sick of the scapegoating on this damn program. I’ll defend it.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="46d224ec-bb80-41da-8183-3a759c73585f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/10/us/gavin-newsom-california-governor-budget.html">The New York Times</a>.

Newsom's First Budget Calls for Big Spending and Paying Down Debt

His $209 billion proposal, which now goes to the Legislature, left little doubt that California, already one of the more liberal states, was taking a turn to the left and moving beyond the fiscal restraint of his predecessor, Jerry Brown.

Newsom's first budget calls for big spending and paying down debt

<h1>WILLIAMS, Calif. — It’s time to add another name to the farewell tour circuit in this year of Elton John, Joan Baez, Paul Simon and Ozzy Osbourne: Jerry Brown, the governor of California.</h1>

This article originally appeared in <a id="63a4d905-961c-4981-b1aa-d6e0f1a53e6f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/03/us/california-governor-jerry-brown-farewell-tour.html">The New York Times</a>.

Not that anyone should consider this any kind of long goodbye for Brown, whose successor will be sworn in Monday.

'What will I not miss?' In California, a long farewell from Jerry Brown

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Adam Nagourney

Articles written by the author

A Memoir From the Young, Gay Mayor of South Bend Running for President

'What Will I Not Miss?' In California, a Long Farewell From Jerry Brown

'What Will I Not Miss?' In California, a Long Farewell From Jerry Brown

Newsom's first budget calls for big spending and paying down debt

'What will I not miss?' In California, a long farewell from Jerry Brown